Tuesday, November 23, 2010

Cat?? What Cat??

Renting. My whole life I have rented. Except in the womb, that wasn't rented. But every apartment I lived in after that was rented. I rent now. One thing that is good about renting is that when things break - you don't have to foot the bill - not that I go around breaking stuff - except that on my first night in our London apartment I did break all the shelves in our wardrobe with an exceptionally heavy suitcase. But so what? I'm sure other people have made irreparable damage to a rented apartment mere hours after crossing the threshold.

Having stuff fixed is the good part. Hiding the Cat is the bad part.

Cats are never allowed. Its so racist. What damage is my cat likely to do that I wouldn't do myself?? So when it is "apartment inspection time" ...hence - the 'hiding of the cat' routine.

In my old apartment we used to take Lenny to the park and he could discover the wonders of grass for an hour, but now we don't have a park nearby, we don't have a car and its about 2 degrees outside.

The problem arises - where to store the child??

Tonight we had such an inspection... And it never really sinks in that I will have to form a game plan until about 20 mins before the Inspector is due to arrive.

Suffice to say.. we panicked.

Ideas that were thrown around.

* How about if we just put him in the wardrobe and cover him with jumpers??* What if we put him in a box and hide it on the stairs?? no one will know its our cat and we can blame our upstairs neighbours for having a cat delivered to the wrong door.*What about if we take all the light bulbs out of the light fixtures, if he can't see the cat he can't be sure that the cat exists.

From this point onwards our ideas became abstract to say the least..

* What if we pour all our ice cubes on the ground then we complain that the freezer door is broken, that way he is too busy being harassed about the fridge to worry about looking for cats*What if we set fire to something small then he will be too distracted with the fire to worry about looking for cats??

In the end though, we went for something equally stupid and ridiculous.

Hide the Cat Plan #3975773

First - put cat in a box then put the box in the spare room, lock the spare room and pretend we don't have any keys to the room if he asks to go in thereSecond - turn 'Friends' up really loudThird - talk loudly especially when he walks past the spare room doorFourth and the most cunning part of the plan - confuse the hell out of the Inspector by dressing up like we are about to go out and don't have enough time to do this 'nuisance' inspection in the first place.. unfortunately this genius part of the plan didn't come into effect until about 40 seconds before the Inspector rang the doorbell, so I had to do with my 'furcoat over pyjamas' look.

He was in the apartment for about 35 seconds before he left unawares of any feline entities inhabiting the place... sucker!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

To be honest though he probably left because we were totally weirding him out. I mean, I don't think our outfits were fooling anyone - he clearly thought we were deranged mental patients.

Might I just add though that the Inspectors name was: Mr M Biggerdik.. so yeah, I might come across as a 'Grey Gardens' mental lady, but at least my name isn't Rachel Biggerdik.

I've always told my mates they should just lie about having cats to potential landlords. The only downside to that is the stench of the litter boxes would give them away in a microsecond. I really don't understand why they insist on using bloody biodegradable stinky litter when they could have smell-free enviro-unfriendly crystal litter making their lives bearable.

Thankfully, we own this place (well, we rent it from the Bank) so Barry gets free reign and no stupid inspections. Mind you, I could do with one every now and then just to force me to actually clean the place. :P